Clock Seconds

Turn on seconds in your system clock.

You don't really need to know what time it is down to the second. Only typically matters on specific automated deadlines, such as a sale opening. But you can still ignore it, the point is to enable the option. When you need to know, you do.

Still, there are some uses. If you're about to be late, two minutes¹ of ambiguity can make the difference between wrapping up whatever you were doing and needing to run out. It's handy to know how many seconds something took without needing to pull out a stopwatch.

For me there's also a mental benefit; it reminds me that the clock is ticking.²

For many (most?) people that's understandably stress inducing because it creates pressure to do things faster, or even a general judgment that you should be doing something. 5am hustle culture and all that. But I find that after a while you internalize that time never stops, so it can't be a value judgment on anything you do.

It simply is.

Things take as long as they take, including breaks.

Better to face and accept that than ignore it.

- Rew

Nightly Notes

Real short one today, I burned most of my writing time on another draft which I expect will be the longest yet. I wonder if that'll become a habit, it's simply too long to write in one day while living the rest of my life, and a lot of these have been bouncing around my head for more than long enough to justify the wordcount.

If you've read the other Nightlys it should be obvious why this topic has come up now. Writing this series has already tweaked my daily schedule in funny ways, there's always a mental tracker running of hours to next post. I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. I think it's a positive change, at least as it stands.

I should use italics more, I'm noticing that things read differently than I wrote them in my head.

Why do I sign off twice?

Well, I started because I wanted to do a little gag in the first post, and I guess it just stuck. But I think the actual answer is that I think of these as unrelated, because I have to write the Nightly the night of.³ It's barely edited, written last, and comes out of a different headspace.

So I suppose I'm signing off as the tired and questioning editor here, not the confident advisor.

- Rew